The Books
Dreaming in Hindi
“In a lionhearted attempt to shed her past—years of numbing jobs at glossy magazines and two life-threatening bouts with cancer— Katherine Russell Rich voyaged to India to learn Hindi, a language with one word, kal, for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow.’ Fortified with neuroscience and laced with humor (‘A lover who speaks the language is a faster route to fluency than any tapes or courses, but perhaps more expensive’), Dreaming in Hindi is a crash course in emotional agility, in an understanding too deep for words.” —O, the Oprah Magazine
“Rich, a natural journalist, gracefully sprinkles reportage about neuroscience and linguistics, as well as her own poignant insights, into her narrative. ‘If you can’t express something to anyone around you,’ she asks, ‘doesn’t it exist only in your mind?’—Elle
“Dreaming in Hindi is a funny, deeply humane journey of words that invites the reader to awaken to new sounds and sensibilities in India. Katherine Russell Rich reflects our own history and culture back at us through the lens of a storied culture. What a gorgeous, intelligent book!”—Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Lark and Termite
“…a charming intellectual travelogue, partly about the culture and history of India, partly about the nature of language and language learning, and also, as usual for great travel writing, very much about its author…. ‘I ski Hindi,’ [Rich writes and] elsewhere in the book, she skis psycholinguistics, in long, gleeful conversations in university laboratories and the pages of books and articles; and just about every other language-related discipline gets at least one downhill run as well.” –Mark Liberman, Language Log
The Red Devil
“Brilliant, harrowing, beautifully written, beautifully lived. This book has both charm and importance, and how often does one see those two qualities in combination?”—Lorrie Moore, author of A Gate at the Stairs
“Her humor, astonishingly self-aware, crackles throughout…”
—The New York Times
“The Red Devil bucks tradition and falls squarely on the side of ‘funny,’ ‘intelligent,’ and ‘wickedly sharp.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Admirable, evocative, laced with shimmering pearls of hard-earned wisdom and stunning wit, The Red Devil is a chronicle of illness that transcends itself to become a testament to the bounty and bravery of the human spirit.”—Elle
